It's rare to encounter a heavy band that's garnered the sort of wide-ranging praise that Pallbearer has. With a sound that blends crushing, downtuned dirge with ethereal, psychedelic elements and melodic sense matched by few in their genre, the Arkansas doom quartet's 2012 debut album, Sorrow And Extinction, has garnered favorable attention not only from the metal press but also from less metal-oriented outlets like NPR and Pitchfork. Though their music can call to mind such relatively disparate genre luminaries as Yob and Candlemass, Pallbearer have concocted a sound that is uniquely their own, a feat that's as rare within their style as their popularity outside of it. I managed to get a few questions in with bassist Joseph Rowland.
Photo by Greg Cristman
Pallbearer has earned acclaim from some fairly unexpected sources for a metal band. What's the strangest place you've gotten accolades from?
Ah man, that's a tough question. Probably the weirdest, most unexpected one I've seen was Entertainment Weekly. I just can't fathom why [laughs]. They don't seem like they'd be a very Pallbearer-friendly publication.
Have you gotten any negative response from the metal community as a result of your wider popularity?
Oh yeah, of course. As soon as we started getting some slightly more mainstream notoriety, all the cult metal warriors started hating on it. I guess that's par for the course, all the internet haters like to pick on us now, but we're not doing anything different than we ever have been.
It seems like a lot of the critical attention Pallbearer has gotten has been focused on trying to find a place to categorize your music, whether that's in comparison to other Arkansas bands or noting that there's more of a European My Dying Bride/Candlemass style influence noticeable in your work than there is in many American bands. Is it ever frustrating to be confronted by these attempts to pigeonhole what you do?
I guess, maybe a little bit. It seems like people have had a hard time pigeonholing it which, more than anything, I'm happy about. But yeah, it gets kind of old hearing the Warning comparison all the time because that's not really what we've ever been going for. But people are going to see what they want in it, and I don't fault anybody for finding similarities to something else.
Was the band started with the intention of bridging gaps between different strains of heavier music, or was it more of an intuitive process?
When we started the band, we had kind of a specific vision, but we were still finding our way towards what it became from there. We had a few ideas going into it, but it took a while to jell together into something that's more of a signature sound for us.
Unlike a lot of doomier bands, Pallbearer relies on cohesive songwriting rather than just a string of riffs. What's the process of constructing your songs like?
In that regard, there's definitely a lack of attention to songwriting with a lot of heavy bands these days. Even moreso, memorable melodies have been abandoned by a lot of bands. We put most of our focus on that, and when we're writing and, whether it takes a year to write a song or a few days, our focus is on the songwriting craft more than the riffs.
The combination of the band's name and the album's title, both references to death and desolation, convey the suggestion that the music is going to be a distinctly bleak experience. This isn't really borne out by the music, though, which tends to represent a more dynamic variety of moods. Is it difficult to balance the initial cathartic darkness with a broader palette?
I don't think that, just because the name has a certain connotation, the name defines us too much. We're never going to be writing Beach Boys pop or anything like that. [laughs] But we definitely have a tendency towards melancholy, if not dark, music so I think it'll probably always have a basis in that to some degree, even if there are some triumphant aspects to it. It reflects how we feel life is – it has its ups and downs, so there's no reason to have the music be one hundred percent downer all the time.
I noticed that the mix that you'd contributed to the Cvltnation series consisted solely of [German psychedelic/experimental band] Popul Vuh material. The influence of more experimental music isn't always readily apparent in Pallbearer's music; what do you take from bands like that?
With Popul Vuh, there's an extremely mystical atmosphere, a hypnotic aspect that I try to borrow from it. I think that they pretty much mastered this really meditative and evocative mood in their songwriting. I would certainly like to be able to achieve that and, while we're definitely a very different band, capturing that essence and mood is something that I'm interested in as a songwriter
Photo by Samantha Marble
You'd mentioned in another interview that Sorrow And Extinction was written to fit within the confines of a 45-minute album. Did this affect the writing process?
It definitely did. It pushed us to not have any filler whatsoever. We worked with the songs and edited them until we felt there was zero content that wasn't absolutely necessary. I think that should be everybody's goal in their music. There shouldn't be any extra bullshit. But it definitely pushed us to scrutinize and make sure that we weren't letting anything slip past us that might not be one hundred percent quality. At least for how it sounded to us--whether that's true for other people, I don't know.
Is it something you'd try to replicate with future recordings?
As time has gone on, I find myself less interested in listening to really long, sixty-plus minute albums. I'd rather listen to something that can fit on a single LP. I'm a little disappointed our album wasn't albe to fit on one LP, so we'll probably be pushing ourselves to edit everything even more next time around. Or at least logistically look at it to see what stays and goes, in order to make it a cohesive listening experience that's still fairly compact. That's a tried and true format that's worked really well for a lot of the history of recorded music. It's worked in a lot of bands' favor, and I think the idea of an album being longer than, say, forty-five minutes is a relatively new concept. I can't really think of many great, classic double albums. There are exceptions, but a lot of the time the longer albums lead to excess, and we're trying to be the opposite of excess.
You've changed drummers a few times in recent years. Has this affected your creative process at all?
Honestly, it's probably helped. After going through a few different drummers, we've ended up with one now who's a little bit more suited to playing more experimental and forward-thinking material. Not to knock our previous drummer Chuck at all, but he's a more straight-forward, hard-hitting drummer who was more interested in the heavy aspect. I don't know that he would've been as suited to some of our other ideas. In our journey as a band, having worked with a few different drummers, we're now working with somebody who suits our style more than anybody we've played with, who's the most apt to be part of the creative process and the natural progression.
You've been hesitant to discuss the meaning behind the lyrics, leaving them open to interpretation. The art to Sorrow And Extinction, however, seems like it has some direct parallels to some of the imagery. Was there any concern that the art would render literal some of the elements that you wanted to remain vague?
It's still pretty symbolic and open for interpretation. I think it's best to let people take meaning from it however they choose. We have our own meaning for it, but I've also heard some other interpretations that other people have come up with that would apply just as well.
I noticed that 20 Buck Spin was very adamant about not pressing any limited versions of your album and stated that they would keep it in print, which is at odds with the sort of scarcity economics a lot of labels undertake to ensure sales. Was this their idea or something the band brought to the table?
That was something that we both agreed upon right off the bat. I think there's a place for the vinyl collector's market nowadays, but I wanted whoever might want to get the album to be able to get it without having to go to eBay and end up paying a ridiculous amount of money to be able to hear it. Dave from 20 Buck Spin was on the same page and it was pretty much just a mutual appreciation for music listening instead of collecting.
You're about to go on tour with Enslaved, Royal Thunder, and Ancient VVisdom. Was there anything that particularly attracted you to any of those bands?
Of course. Enslaved is an awesome, progressively-minded band that's been killing it for twenty-plus years that we came up listening to. We already toured with Royal Thunder last year and they're all really great people and one of the best live bands out there nowadays. They're keeping alive the tradition of the professional touring band, like there were in the 70s, doing it for a living and really kicking ass. They're top of the game pros.
Are there any other bands with whom you've felt a particular affinity?
Pinkish Black, for sure. Really unique band with a great live show and awesome atmosphere who are kind of coming from a similar place as us with some of the concepts and influences. There aren't a lot of bands out there that are huge fans of Magma and Van Der Graaf Generator like us.
What are the plans for Pallbearer after the upcoming tour?
We're actually in the middle of recording a single right now that'll be a split with Uzala. We've got the drums tracked but we'll have to finish it when we get back from tour. We'll be playing South By Southwest and we have some European tour action going on in the spring. Then later on in the year, probably autumn, we're planning on starting to record our second full-length. So it'll be a busy year.
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Pallbearer performs with Fuck The Facts, Cough, and Street Pizza at Strange Matter (929 W. Grace St.) on Saturday, February 23rd. Doors open at 8 PM. Admission is $10--advance tickets are available HERE.